Plenary-Sunday

Sandra Loerakker

Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering

Eindhoven University of Technology, Netherlands

Abstract:

Cardiovascular tissue engineering aims at replacing diseased or malformed cardiovascular tissues by living tissues that can grow and remodel in line with the recipient's demands. Despite several promising results, previous studies have also shown that the in vivo development or adaptation of engineered cardiovascular tissues is often variable and suboptimal. A mechanistic understanding of tissue development and adaptation is therefore needed to understand how these processes can and should be guided in order to ensure long-term tissue functionality. In our research, we focus on developing computational models to understand and predict how mechanical factors drive the growth and remodeling of cardiovascular tissues, with the ultimate aim to computationally predict what initial properties of engineered constructs will lead to a successful in vivo performance. In this talk, I will discuss a range of computational models that we have developed to describe mechano-driven cardiovascular adaptation, and show how we used these models to successfully propose a solution for preventing one of the most common failure modes of tissue-engineered heart valves in vivo.

Session video recording